


between reach and grasp

by beanierose



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: College AU, F/F, Longing, Pining, Slow Burn, all the good gay shit, you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:03:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanierose/pseuds/beanierose
Summary: brooke accidentally catches feelings.





	1. one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place in the same universe as my existing Trixya fics, but it’s actually a prequel so not really necessary to have read those. My eternal thanks to holtzmanns and mia_ugly for looking this over for me!

in the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counter glance, between ‘i love you’ and ‘i love you too,’ the absent presence of desire comes alive  
**ann carson, _eros the bittersweet_**

* * *

The bet starts sort of by accident.

It’s Katya’s idea, of course. Most of their shenanigans are. Since the moment Katya asked to borrow a light, both of them outside the dorm at one in the morning on their second day of school, she and Brooke have been inseparable. So many of their classmates were crippled with homesickness the first few weeks, but Brooke has a bendy blonde lesbian soul twin in Katya. Talking to her, hearing those wide open vowels and the way she will suddenly pitch her voice up or down just to get a laugh, soothes any of the places in her stomach or heart that miss Toronto.

“I’m winning,” Katya says. She holds up her fingers in a peace sign and then slowly presses them together, rotates her wrist, curls them up towards herself in a beckoning motion.

Brooke snorts and shoves on Katya’s shoulder. “That’s disgusting. You are a vile creature.”

“A vile creature who’s getting more pussy than you, mama.”

The cafe is not exactly busy at this time of day, but Brooke still feels the livid flame of embarrassment licking at the column of her throat. She glances around herself, but no one is paying them any attention. They are both early risers. Katya does yoga every single morning and Brooke goes for a run or to the gym and then they meet for breakfast, every day.

“I was under the impression that it’s not about _more_. You said cutest girl, not most girls.”

“Well it improves my statistical chances to hook up with as many as possible.”

Brooke stirs her tea slowly while she ponders that. Pointless, since she doesn’t take milk or sugar, but it earns her a second to think. Of the two of them, Katya is louder and quicker to jump in with a comeback. It’s good for Brooke, it’s drawn her out of her shell a bit, but it’s a lot before eight am.

“Improves your statistical chances of other things too,” she mutters, and earns a scream of laughter from Katya.

It’s not true, not really. Neither of them are relationship people, but it doesn’t mean that they’re reckless. Safe and consensual, every single time. She’s trying not to be the mom friend so much, not to be quite so tightly laced, but this is the one thing she absolutely will not budge on.

It’s drizzly this morning. Little droplets of rain smatter the windows of the cafe and streak down. There are puddles on the sidewalks and the air smells rich and earthy and alive. It’s warm here still, just as warm as it was last August. She’s still trying to get her head around that.

She never imagined she would miss the cold, miss the snow, but she does. Her breath would come in little puffs in the mornings before the studio got warm. And she used to smoke a lot less in the winter, because it was way too cold to stand outside and she will not ever do it indoors. Now, there’s nothing to stop her.

“So, do you have anyone lined up or are you just gonna let me win?” Katya arches an eyebrow at her.

The thing is, Brooke isn’t as good at this as Katya is. All through high school she was so focused on training, dancing at the studio for hours every single day after classes ended and sometimes in the mornings before school started, too. She never really had time to pursue flirtations. And she wasn’t out. Nina knew, and Plastique, but she was keenly aware of how it could be received by her fellow dancers.

How they might shy away from changing next to her. How uncomfortable they might be in leotards and tights around her. It was just easier to brush it off, to explain her never having been in a relationship away as a byproduct of her intense perfectionism.

“Well I don’t want to stoop to Craigslist-” she plows right through Katya’s sputtered protestation. “So no, not yet. You didn’t mention a time limit, you crone.”

“What about that cutie from calc last semester?”

“Straight,” Brooke sighs.

Across the table, Katya takes her hand and squeezes in commiseration. There’s a wry little crease at the corners of her mouth but she’s kind enough not to let it bloom across her face. They’ve both been there, more than once.

“Listen to me, Brooke Lynn. You are a hot piece of ass. And also like, a nice person or whatever. People would be lining up around the block if you just flipped your sign from closed to open.”

“My sign or my legs?”

“Both,” Katya grins.

Katya gets up to bus their table, and leaves Brooke sitting there staring out of the window. She taps the fingernails of one hand against the tabletop in a half-rhythm, and rests her chin in the palm of the other. The weather is making her feel a little wistful today. A little melancholic. Part of the reason she came to California for school was because she wanted to feel the sun on her skin.

Fifteen years of ballet have left her strong and lithe, but also battered. The bones of her feet are misshapen from her pointe shoes. For the rest of her life her body will be misaligned by what she has put it through. She could have danced professionally, could have toured the world, but then a couple years ago she suffered a catastrophic knee injury. She lost her chances of joining the National Ballet School of Canada, and she lost her mind for a little bit there too.

Brooke stretches her legs out beneath the table as far as she can, until she feels the pleasant burn in the backs of her thighs. She maybe pushed it a bit too hard on her run this morning and her knee will ache for the rest of the day, but it was worth it to clear her head.

She has a full schedule today, three classes back to back this morning and then she’s meeting Fame to study. It’s nice to be still for a moment before she begins her day.

“You comin’?” Katya taps Brooke’s shoulder and then immediately withdraws her hand, flexing her fingers like she’s burned them. “Oh, don’t touch me.”

It makes Brooke roll her eyes, but she’s laughing. Outside the cafe they both light up, and Brooke does her best to shelter her cigarette from the rain in the cup of her palm. She’s going to have to do something with her hair when she gets back to the dorm and she works through it in her mind, whether she’s going to have enough time to dry it and style it again or whether she should just give up and throw it into a ponytail.

This thing with Katya is appealing to her competitive nature despite her better judgement. Swanning around campus with a damp, kinky ponytail and leggings is just not going to cut it. Brooke opens the main door of their building with her shoulder and holds it for Katya, who shakes her head like a dog and sprays droplets of water from the ends of her waist length hair in an arc around herself.

It’s extremely unfair that Katya can still be so sexy even like this. It seems like no matter what she wears or does, she has girls flustered and mooning over her. Brooke has to put in a little more effort. It’s not that she’s not attractive. She’s just a bit more awkward around women. Never quite sure how to make her intentions clear without being crude or crass.

“You’re thinking very hard. I smell burning.” Katya wrinkles her nose.

“That’s your lungs,” Brooke fires back.

Katya screams an obnoxious, staccato burst of laughter that makes several people in the lobby turn to look at them. Brooke has always been used to being stared at; she’s tall and graceful and she’s not ignorant of the fact that she’s pretty. Being with Katya is a whole other beast though. She’s so _loud_.

“Oh! Hey, do you wanna go to this tonight?”

Katya is studying the cork board where people tack posters and advertisements for tutoring and passive aggressive notices to _please remove your laundry from the machine when you’re done using it and not four days later_. She taps two fingers against one of the flyers.

“Dyke night?” Brooke tilts her head in consideration. “What do you think that involves?”

“Probably building IKEA furniture and shaving our heads.”

Brooke laughs out loud, one protective hand fluttering up to touch the white-blonde length of her hair. “Sounds great. Let’s do it.”

“Let’s get you laid, mama.” Katya pats her on the shoulder the way you might comfort an ailing grandparent.

She rolls her eyes at Katya, but she thinks about it the rest of the day. At lunch with Fame, and all through her classes, she can’t stop. It hasn’t been that long, not as long as Katya likes to make out, but still. Anticipation is coming awake slowly in the pit of her stomach.

In the shower, Brooke shaves and exfoliates. She moisturises her skin when she gets out, taking extra time with her elbows and her heels and her knees. When Katya arrives Brooke is just putting the finishing touches on her hair with her curling iron.

“Are you high?” Brooke asks immediately. Katya’s eyes are a wheeling soft-focus and she has a tiny twitch above her left eyebrow she’s clearly trying very hard to suppress.

“Just a tiny bump, _Mom_. I’m good.”

They smoke together, cigarettes and sometimes pot, and they like to get white girl wasted on the weekend, but Brooke doesn’t usually join Katya for this part. She has an addictive personality, and when Katya told her what she thought the first time she did meth-

_oh, this is gonna be a problem for me for the rest of my life_

-she’d rather not, thank you so much.

One time she let herself be swayed into doing a tab. She had stared at herself in the mirror until her face melted down her neck and she watched her own eyes blink back at her from a puddle on the tile. It’s not for her.

“You smell so good!” Katya says. She runs her hands up the outsides of Brooke’s fishnetted thighs and around to squeeze her ass. “Sorry. I’m so fucking horny.”

“Well it has been what? At least eight minutes.”

Katya ignores her and flops dramatically backwards onto Brooke’s bed. Her roommate isn’t here. She thinks her roommate might be scared of her, actually. She spends a lot of time at her boyfriend’s place, and Brooke is torn between wanting to reassure her that she doesn’t have to make herself scarce and enjoying having the space to herself most of the time.

It’s fun, getting ready to go out. She likes the drama of it all, agonising over the right outfit and fussing with her false lashes. She never had this in high school. In one of her queer history classes a few weeks back, they talked about the delayed adolescence a lot of queer people experience. She feels fifteen and flustered.

She holds up two outfit options to let Katya choose for her. The bodysuit she picks is black and lacy and something she would normally wear _underneath_ her actual clothes. It makes her feel real fucking sexy. She’s wearing thigh high boots - borrowed from Katya - and she admires herself in the mirror, contorting to get a view of every angle.

“Stop feeling your oats so hard, you vapid whore,” Katya cackles at her.

She ushers Katya to stand next to her in the mirror and takes a selfie of the two of them, sends it over to Fame. Brooke invited her, but Fame is newly sober and trying to avoid stressors. Going out to a bar is not good for her right now. Later in the week, Brooke will be sure to catch a movie with her or go get their nails done together.

It can’t be easy, being sober at college. Brooke doesn’t want Fame to feel like she’s missing out on anything. Really, she admires her. She doesn’t have a problem, but only because she’s making a very conscious effort to keep things under control.

Fame texts them back immediately, a selfie of herself with some kind of green face mask. Katya cranes over Brooke’s shoulder to see it, her hot breath tickling Brooke’s ear.

“This fucking bitch,” she mutters. “Why does she look better at home in her pajamas than we do in full face?”

She’s accompanied the picture with a whole string of heart emojis and a text wishing them a fun evening. Brooke is suddenly full up with tenderness. She misses Nina and Plastique a lot, texts their group chat every single day, but she has a family here too. Her best friend, hopping impatiently around the room and rearranging all of her knick knacks, and Fame who is so gentle and kind.

“Are you ready?” Katya knocks her elbow into Brooke.

“Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

The bar is crowded - it is Berkeley, after all. Brooke spots a few people she knows from some of her classes and flutters her fingers at them in greeting. She finds a table and drums her fingers against it while she waits for Katya to come back with their drinks. It’s loud enough that Brooke feels the bass rattling her skull and she clenches her teeth. She needs to be drunker than this.

Katya comes back with shots for each of them and Brooke slams both of hers back immediately. It makes Katya scream a laugh and stamp her feet against the floor. Her pupils are blown out huge and she’s not making eye contact with Brooke. She’s really fucking high, and Brooke huffs a soft breath of amusement.

The mom friend in her is stirring. She won’t get too wasted tonight, doesn’t ever really like to get to a point where she can’t take care of herself. Already, she feels the pleasant warmth of the alcohol in the pit of her stomach.

When the next song starts playing Katya screams again and leaps right out of her seat. She grabs both of Brooke’s hands in hers and tugs her onto the dancefloor. The crush of bodies around them means Brooke has to let go of Katya’s hands. She lifts her arms above her head instead and lets her hips roll lazily to the rhythm. Being a ballerina doesn’t always translate very well to the kind of dancing people do in clubs, and getting too introspective about it never helps.

She watches Katya, the way she moves like a marionette with the strings cut. The way she throws her head back on a laugh and doesn’t care who’s looking at her. Brooke does her best to emulate some of that energy. She’s a head taller than pretty much everyone else in the crowd and people move out of her way without being asked, allow her to take up space.

They dance through the next four or five songs and then Brooke has to take a breather. Her knee hurts. If she’d known this morning that she’d be going out tonight she wouldn’t have pushed herself for that extra two miles.

Her hair is sticking to her skin and she rubs her palm against the back of her neck, wrinkling her nose when it comes away sweat-slick. She settles into one of the stools at the bar and waits for the bartender to have a free second. From this vantage point she can see Katya, and can see the gorgeous brunette who has her hands at Katya’s waist and rapidly sliding down.

Brooke sighs and props her head in her non-clammy hand. Yeah. She’s definitely gonna lose this bet. She orders a vodka soda and doesn’t drink it, busies herself twirling the straw instead. Suddenly she’s so _tired_. She could be at home right now, icing her knee and watching old _Charmed_ reruns.

The pain is making her irritable. People keep nudging her, trying to get to the bar and get their own drinks. She keeps her elbows wide to maintain some shred of personal space. Her phone buzzes and startles her. She put it inside the bra of her bodysuit because she couldn’t be bothered to keep track of a purse tonight.

When she tugs it free it is sweaty and disgusting and she wipes it off with her napkin. The screen lights up again with the same notification. It’s a text from Fame, just checking in. The sudden, stupid burn of tears makes Brooke squeeze her eyes closed for a second.

It’s lonely, here at the bar. The music is too loud, and usually the prospect of being surrounded by beautiful women who might actually be interested in her would be exciting but tonight she’s just. . .tired. Everyone seems to be paired off already. If Nina were here, she would be making a dumb joke about U-Hauls and cats and codependency.

She texts back, tells Fame that they’re both fine and that Katya has found her next victim. Conquest. Whatever. Brooke seeks them out in the crowd and spots them back at the table, the brunette fully straddling Katya with her tongue down Katya’s throat.

There have been a couple of times when Brooke has seen her at work up close. She is so staggeringly confident and direct - Brooke has heard her more than once straight up say to a pretty girl _I’m very interested in having sex with you_ and the wildest part is that it works. She wishes she had the nerve for that, but her heart is a tender and timid thing and she doesn’t dare.

Two fingers land at the inside of Brooke’s elbow. She swivels around on her stool, mouth already open to say _hey I don’t fucking know you please don’t touch me_.

And then her mouth snaps closed again. It’s like she’s been coldclocked. All of the air leaves her body in one great _whoosh_. The most beautiful girl she has ever seen in her entire life is standing right there. Her hair is dark and falling in waves that nearly cover one eye. She’s wearing all leather and even in the dim light of the bar her skin is radiant and soft.

She smiles, and Brooke hears the noise of a dial up modem as if from the other end of a long tunnel. The oxygen still hasn’t returned to her lungs and she feels concave, like she’s been hollowed out.

“Sorry, Mamí,” the girl says. “Just tryna get my jush.”

Her voice is jarring. It snaps Brooke back into her body so fast that it gives her an immediate headache, blooming at her left temple and all around her eye socket. The girl turns away from Brooke to order her drink. She’s resting both elbows on the edge of the bar and leaning her stomach against it so that her back arches and her ass strains against the confines of her tiny skirt.

Brooke swallows. Hard.

When she gets her drink Brooke figures the girl will disappear back into the crowd and never be seen again and Brooke will spend the rest of her life constructing elaborate fantasies with one hand inside of her own underwear. Instead, she turns around to lean back against the bar and she grins at Brooke around her straw.

“You ain’t here by yourself? Gorgeous thing like you.”

“Uh. I am. Well. I’m not. I wasn’t. Now. . .I don’t know,” Brooke splutters, because she is a fucking idiot. Because this girl just called her _gorgeous_ and she kind of went deaf-blind after that.

She takes a centering breath. Katya’s tried to teach her some basic yoga techniques and she does her best to focus on _pranayama_ now. She is _not_ going to have an anxiety attack here in this bar because a pretty girl is talking to her. She is not.

The woman lifts both eyebrows and drops her chin a little bit in amusement. “That was real clear.”

“I came with my friend.” Brooke gestures in the vague direction of Katya. “But I think she’s busy.”

“C’mon, dyke night,” the girl grins widely. Brooke catches the enticing pink flash of her tongue and sucks in another unsteady breath. She’s a little lightheaded, from the noise and the alcohol both.

For a moment they both watch Katya and the girl she’s currently tonguing. Brooke gives it about four minutes before Katya takes the girl home. She can’t find it in herself to be annoyed by it. Not now. Not with this beautiful woman standing next to her.

“I’m Vanessa,” she says, and offers Brooke her hand.

Brooke takes it and squeezes and says “Brooke Lynn. Or just Brooke is fine too.”

“People call me Vanjie.”

Their heads are bent together, intimate and close in the noise of the bar. Vanjie is right in Brooke’s space, two fingers resting in the crook of her elbow again to keep her there while she leans in. She feels Vanjie’s breath against her ear and it makes her think of bare skin and heat and want.

Vanjie is sweating, her skin glowing with it. She must have been dancing. Brooke can smell it on her, and alcohol and a floral something that she can’t tell if it’s a fragrance or just Vanessa. The bar is lit almost totally in pink tonight and it makes the space feel smaller. Earlier it made Brooke claustrophobic, but now she’s grateful for the way it forces her to get in close to Vanjie.

“Are you here alone?” Brooke asks.

Vanessa tosses her head and the spill of her hair falls over one shoulder. It’s so glossy and dark and Brooke wants to touch, so she does. She runs her fingers along the 40’s style waves and Vanjie tilts into her just a tiny bit.

“Yeah. I ain’t got so many lesbian friends. Was hoping to make some tonight.”

“I’m not sure many of the women here tonight are looking for friendship,” Brooke laughs.

Like summoning Mephistopheles, Katya appears right behind Brooke. She’s got her fingers tangled in the brunette’s, the girl hanging off the end of Katya’s arm. Brooke will never understand how this air of disinterested detachment Katya projects just makes these girls fall all over her even more. It’s ridiculous.

“I gotta get out of here, mama. You good?”

Katya darts a fast glance to Vanjie and then back to Brooke and she arches an eyebrow. She’s got an unlit cigarette between two fingers and watching it there makes Brooke crave one so suddenly and so fiercely that she actually gasps.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll see you for breakfast?”

The prospect of being up in the morning makes Katya wrinkle her nose. She has yet to look at - or acknowledge at all - the girl orbiting the end of her arm, but Brooke knows her. She knows the shift of her weight from foot to foot and the way she chews on her bottom lip.

“Might be brunch.”

“Make good choices,” she calls after Katya as she hustles the brunette toward the exit. She receives Katya’s extended middle finger in response and she huffs a fond breath of laughter.

When she turns back around, Vanessa is watching her with interest. She’s almost finished the drink she ordered and the straw is stained with a ring of deep plum from her lipstick. There’s glitter on her collarbones and Brooke wants to put her mouth there.

“That your friend?” Vanessa asks. She’s a little wide-eyed, but most people are when they meet Katya for the first time.

Ridiculous tenderness washes through Brooke and she smiles. As chaotic as it is to be friends with Katya, she’s so grateful for her.

“Yeah. Katya. I would say she’s not normally like that, but. . .well.”

Vanjie puts her empty glass down on the bar behind herself. It frees her hand up and she rests it at her hip. Her nails are long and Brooke bites the inside of her cheek. Huh.

“I ain’t judging, Mary. She cute.”

It’s still way too loud and too hot and God, Brooke feels like she’s losing her mind all of the sudden. She presses the back of her hand to her forehead for a moment to try and get it together, but it doesn’t help very much.

“I need a cigarette. Wanna. . .come out back with me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hello on twitter or tumblr


	2. two.

Outside, it’s drizzling. Brooke leans back against the brick edifice of the building and does her best to shelter herself. It takes her a couple of tries to get her cigarette lit. Not because Vanessa is watching her with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Definitely not. She’s standing in close, as if they were sharing an umbrella or an intimate moment.

“Do you wanna?” Brooke offers her the cigarette carton.

Vanessa shakes her head. It makes her hair fall enticingly over one eye and she brushes it back. “Nah. I don’t smoke.”

“Oh,” Brooke says, uselessly. She has forgotten how to have a conversation like a normal person, apparently. “Do you mind if I. . .”

“Came out here with you, didn’t I?”

Right. She did. Even though she doesn’t smoke, Vanessa is standing out here in this alley breathing in Brooke’s second-hand carcinogens and getting her pretty hair all wet. Brooke takes a deep drag and holds the smoke in her mouth for a long time before she exhales. She’s not looking at Vanessa, but she can feel her eyes on her like gooseflesh.

It makes her feel split open and bare, like her insides might come spilling out. She crosses one arm over herself, anchors her hand at her opposite hip. Sweat is drying on her back and the creases of her knees and the salt makes her skin prickle uncomfortably.

Brooke closes her eyes and tips her head back to feel the rain on her skin. It’s much cooler out here than it is inside and she’s glad for it, feels the pink leaving her cheeks and neck a little. Not all the way, because Vanessa is unabashedly staring at her.

“I hope this ain’t rude,” Vanessa starts. She tugs the hem of her tiny dress down a little bit. “But it don’t seem like you’re having a good time. Why’d you come?”

“I let Katya talk me into it.” Brooke finishes her cigarette and drops the butt to the ground, crushes it beneath her heel.

It’s a little worrying, how much better she feels now. She gets it: it’s an addiction, and it’s meditative, and it forces her to slow her breathing down. Still, she hates to need it so much.

The reality of not having a purse with her tonight is catching up to her. She has no gum, no mints. She’ll have to deal with the taste of alcohol and smoke until she can get home and brush her teeth. She works her tongue awkwardly around her teeth and then realises how unattractive that must make her look and bites down on it instead.

“You let Katya talk you into a lot of stuff, Mary?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Brooke says on a breath of laughter.

Vanessa stews on that for a moment. Tiny droplets of water are collecting in her hair and they make her shimmery and celestial. “And y’all haven’t. . .”

She waves a hand, to simulate _what_ Brooke isn’t completely sure, but she gets the idea. Everybody thinks that, all the time. She’s used to people assuming that something is going on between Katya and her, because they spend so much time together and they’re so tactile and Katya likes to hold her hands and kiss her cheeks. It doesn’t bother her; she could do much, much worse. So she isn’t sure why she’s quite so hasty to explain.

“God, no. We got drunk and made out one time, in the first like, month that we knew each other. But no. Never.”

Vanessa doesn’t say anything to that, but her shoulders drop just a fraction and she gives Brooke the tiniest nod. Her purse is slipping down her shoulder and she hikes it back up. “Do you wanna go back inside?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah,” Vanessa grins. “Me either, Mamí. Wanna walk around a bit?”

Only a half hour ago, Brooke was counting the seconds until it would be socially acceptable to go home and get into bed with her cosiest socks on, but now-

“I’d like that a lot. You got a destination in mind?”

“Nah. I just like being outside at night, I guess. I ain’t never had that before I came here.”

They start walking, and it’s the middle of the night and it’s raining, but it feels just right. The streets are busy with people stumbling home from clubs. More than once, Brooke has to step into file behind Vanessa to let a drunken crowd get by them. It lets her snatch brief moments to look at the swell of her ass in that tight, tight dress. Her hips sway as she walks, confident and not stumbling in her heels.

Vanessa tells her about what it’s like back home in Tampa. How she hated to go anywhere after dark because it was always so crowded with tourists and so brightly lit that it never really felt like nighttime. Brooke trades information with her like secrets, tells her about Toronto. How much she misses it, sometimes.

When they get to Brooke’s building it’s sort of by accident. She hadn’t meant to direct them this way, hadn’t been thinking about where they were going, and now here they are. The awning over the front door shelters them from the rain. It’s starting to get heavier, and the air has that crackling sense of urgency that means it’s about to storm.

“Do you wanna come inside?”

“Oh.” A little crease forms between Vanessa’s brows. “Look, Miss Brooke Lynn. When I told you I was hoping to make _friends_ tonight, I. . .I meant that.”

Something that has been fluttering away in Brooke’s chest all night, something with feathers, goes suddenly still. “Right. No. I know that. It’s just raining a lot. I don’t want you to get wet.”

Well. That’s something that she just said out loud to Vanessa. Fantastic. Brooke chews on the inside of her cheek so she can’t say anything else accidentally suggestive. It’s almost two am and she’s tired again, still. She wants to go inside and make tea and take her makeup off, and she wants Vanessa to sit cross legged on the end of her twin bed and watch.

“I’m already wet.”

Brooke takes that like a gut punch and has to fight not to bend double, out here on the street. She lets her gaze drift slowly from Vanessa’s feet all the way up to the crown of her head. It’s true, her hair is frizzing and her skin is slick with rainwater.

“My roommate isn’t home. Come in, get dry, stay here tonight. No subtext, promise.”

A lot of subtext. She can’t help it. Vanessa is so gorgeous. She likes her, she really does, and some idiot caveperson part of her brain notes that Katya would have to concede. None of the girls she’s taken home since their competition began have been anything close to Vanessa.

Even so. She’s sweet, and funny. Brooke can do friends. Has done, many times and with many different girls. Mostly straight girls, but still. She’s not sure about Vanessa yet. She has those nails, and she looks so hyperfeminine. But then she called Brooke gorgeous, stared at her mouth while she smoked a cigarette.

The room is a total nightmare. As neat as she is, Brooke always finds herself exploding outwards whenever she gets ready to go to a club. Every piece of makeup she owns is scattered across the surface of her desk, and there are several items of clothing on her bed. Bras, she notes, and has to force herself not to hurriedly tidy them away.

Vanessa goes down the hall to the bathrooms, accepts the folded shirt Brooke gives her with both hands. She declined the offer of shorts, so now that’s something Brooke is going to have to figure out how to deal with in the next five minutes.

She spends the time tidying up as much as she can without making it too obvious that that’s what she was doing. Brooke changes into shorts and an oversized tee and ties her hair back in two french braids. She hates waking in the night to the long strands wrapped around her neck or trapped beneath her when she rolls over. And it’ll save some time in the morning when she gets up to run.

“Damn. Our showers ain’t shit compared to y’all’s,” Vanessa says when she comes back into the room.

Her hair is made dark and sleek by the water and it hangs over one shoulder in a thick rope. She’s squeezing excess water from the end of it into the towel Brooke gave her. The borrowed shirt is huge, hanging off her shoulders and hitting her closer to knee than mid-thigh. The sight of her clothes on Vanessa, as entirely platonic as it is, makes Brooke’s breath hitch uncomfortably in her chest.

“Can I get you anything? Tea?”

Vanessa perches delicately on the end of the other bed and crosses one knee over the other. Her bare foot bounces in the air, and a few droplets of water slide down her calf towards her heel. Brooke wants to put her mouth on Vanessa, feels lit from within and scorched with want.

“Nah. I’m real tired, Mamí.”

“Oh, sure. Me too.”

Brooke abandons the kettle and for a moment stands uselessly in the middle of the room, arrested with awkwardness. A small flare of alarm goes off in her chest at the thought that her roommate might come home and find a stranger in her bed. A stranger to Brooke, too, if she’s being honest with herself.

It doesn’t feel like it.

“What time do you need to get up?” Brooke asks.

Vanessa is already under the covers and curled up on her side. Her eyes keep closing for longer and longer stretches of time before she peels them open again. With her face pillowed on her arm and all scrunched up, Brooke can only really see one eye anyway.

“Mm. I got no plans.”

“Okay. Well, I get up at six to run, usually.” Brooke checks the alarm clock on her nightstand and huffs a disgruntled little breath. It makes Vanessa’s eyes pop open again and she lifts her eyebrows. “Four hours of sleep is. . .not ideal.”

“You don’t gotta run, Mamí. One day ain’t gonna kill ya.”

The thing is, she _does_ have to run. And she does have to have the same breakfast (a poached egg, wholemeal toast, a cup of fruit) every morning. Starting her day the exact same way every single day sets her up to deal with whatever the rest of it might throw at her. It’s like creating a foundation of familiarity that helps her to shift and adapt to her often unpredictable afternoons.

“I won’t wake you. You can sleep in.”

“Mm,” Vanessa groans again. She arches up off the mattress like a cat. The sheets fall down from around her shoulders and Brooke sees the way the shirt stretches over Vanessa’s curves. She presses her thighs together and closes her eyes, glad she wasn’t stupid enough to suggest they share one bed. “Hope you sleep good, Miss Brooke.”

She’s out just like that, like felling a tree. It takes Brooke a long while to fall asleep. She stands in the forest, considering the careening echo and then the absolute stillness. Vanessa’s lips are parted and every so often she lets out a little sigh.

In the half-dark of two am, Brooke studies her. Her hair is starting to dry now and it fans out across the pillow. She sees on her roommate’s nightstand Vanessa’s nails, lined up neatly with the two thumbs next to each other and the rest in orderly lines on either side. Her hand is curled around the top of the sheet and Brooke sees that her natural nails are trimmed short, notes that down in the column on the left. The one where she’s keeping her hope.

Vanessa’s dress is draped over the back of Brooke’s desk chair, her heels haphazardly dumped in the middle of the floor, her jewellery and her lashes in a little pile on the nightstand as well. All of the sparkling somethings she adorns herself with have come away. She looks much younger, much smaller. Still beautiful.

Brooke falls asleep thinking about her, and so it’s confusing to wake and actually have her here. She was expecting Vanessa to be a concoction of her subconscious, but no. She is out cold even with the alarm blaring - Brooke smacks the top of it, takes a couple tries to shut it off - and she’s making cute little snuffling noises every now and then.

There’s grit in her eyes. Brooke balls her fists and scrubs at them. It doesn’t help very much. She plucks her phone from her nightstand and wrinkles her nose when she sees that she only has three percent battery left: she forgot to plug it in last night. She has a couple notifications that she ignores. Usually, she likes to get up right away and go for her run and catch up with her social media afterwards. If she lets herself look at it, it’s too easy to lay in bed for another thirty minutes or an hour.

Vanessa sleeps through Brooke changing into a sports bra and yoga pants, sleeps through her lacing up her sneakers, sleeps through her closing the door as softly as she can.

She punishes herself, this morning. She knows she’s doing it, and yet she can’t seem to stop. The extra two miles she tacks onto the end of her typical route are completely unnecessary, especially on less than four hour’s sleep, but it’s the first time she’s felt like herself since she met Vanessa. Sweat itches at her hairline and between her shoulder blades.

When she comes back from her shower, Vanessa is still sleeping. Brooke tilts her head and studies her for a moment. She doesn’t seem to even have moved an inch since she fell asleep. A small pang of jealousy knots itself around her intestine. She can never sleep that well in a strange room, still struggles on the rare occasion her roommate is actually home.

It’s late enough now that Brooke doesn’t feel like an asshole for texting Fame. She left her phone charging in the room while she ran, which she knows is reckless and stupid and dangerous, but whatever. Brooke sends Fame just an emoji, the red square with white letters.

_SOS_

Her phone starts ringing immediately, vibrating in her hand and blaring way too loud. She declines the call right away, but it rings again after only a couple seconds. Brooke declines it a second time, hurries to text Fame again.

_shhh! stop calling!_

_What’s wrong??_ Fame texts her back.

Too late, Brooke remembers that Fame is not Katya. The two of them have a sort of unspoken code. Brooke texts her this emoji whenever she’s stressed out or otherwise in crisis (so three times a week at the very least) and Katya will reply with a nonsensical string of emojis of her own and listen patiently while Brooke talks it out.

With Fame though, with her balanced very gracefully on the knife’s edge of sobriety, she shouldn’t catastrophize like this. It was careless.

_nothings wrong_

_sorry_

She waits a beat. Types a message, deletes it, types it again.

_a cute girls in my room_

Brooke locks her phone and turns it face down, tucks it beneath her thigh. She lasts maybe four seconds.

_!!!!!!!!!_

She grins at the atypically succinct response from Fame, and as she’s grinning another message comes through.

_In your bed???_

Brooke gets up, suddenly too full up with nervous energy to stay sitting on her little twin bed only a few feet away from Vanessa.

Her fingers are quick on the keypad, her nails short enough that they don’t tap against the screen. Not that it matters. If her phone ringing didn’t wake Vanessa, she’s not sure what will.

_other bed_

_met her at the club last night and she slept here bc she got rained on and i didnt want her to walk home wet_

Post-run, Brooke is starving. She could leave Vanessa here while she goes for breakfast, or wake her and see if she wants to come too. Neither option seems appealing right now. She stands in the middle of the room, choosing neither, Schrödinger’s idiot.

_Did you kiss her????_

Brooke bites her lip. It does absolutely nothing to stop the smile spreading across her face. Suddenly she is overcome with tenderness for Fame and her genteel manners, her century-behind view of things. Katya would have asked if they fucked. Katya would have asked for details.

_no_

_just talked for a bit and then she fell asleep_

_should i wake her up???_

While she has the time and the inclination, Brooke puts on a little makeup. It’s not something she would usually bother with before breakfast. She feels a little like one of the leads in a romcom, sneaking out of bed to put on a full face and then climbing back in and pretending to wake up with blush and mascara and lipstick. Usually she scoffs at those scenes, goes on a rant about how if you can’t be vulnerable with your partner things are never going to work out, and Nina pats her arm gently and says _yes dear_.

_Do you have a reason to?_

Brooke replies with three sad face emojis in a row.

_im hungry_

She exits the conversation then and busies herself checking all of her other apps. On Instagram, Katya has posted a boomerang of the two of them dancing and tagged her in it. She reposts it to her own story and adds a few gifs of hearts and confetti to it. The red notification bubble draws her in when she goes back to her home screen, meaning to open Twitter. She’s not sure why she’s being so useless over this, why she needs Fame to tell her what to do, but here they are.

_Wake her! Take her to breakfast._

_Kiss her._

It would take too long, be too complicated, to explain to Fame right now that Vanessa wants them to be friends. That Vanessa doesn’t want her like that. And that’s okay, she can deal with it. Friends is good.

 _hey quick q is it gay to ask a girl for her number after she slept in your clothes_ she sends to Katya, and then she puts her phone down finally.

When she sits on the edge of the mattress, Vanessa’s body tilts towards her hip. She’s grumbly and sleep warm, and she grunts a little noise at Brooke.

“Hey. I’m gonna go get some breakfast, if you’re hungry?”

“It don’t feel like breakfast time,” Vanessa says. Her eyes are still closed, but she rolls onto her back and lifts both arms above her head.

The shirt she borrowed has risen up in the night. Her skin is smooth and soft-looking, her stomach toned. Brooke shifts to sit on her hands so they won’t do something extremely stupid.

“It’s almost seven thirty,” she offers.

“ _God_ ,” Vanessa says, and it’s not- she’s just sleepy. That’s why her voice is all punched out like that. “Why you gotta be the only bitch in college who don’t sleep in? Damn.”

She’s just about to say never mind, stay here, sleep a little more. And then Vanessa opens her eyes and smiles up at her. Brooke’s stupid gay heart does a kick-flip in her chest.

It’s so tender. Brooke never closes the blinds all the way, likes to leave them slatted open so that the light can start waking her before she really has to get up. This morning it’s still overcast and the light is grey and soft, like a particularly forgiving filter. It blurs the edges of everything. Like this, Brooke could so easily lean down and kiss her good morning.

“You don’t have to come with me. I just didn’t want to disappear on you.”

“Nah. I ain’t gonna let you eat without me.” Vanessa sits up in bed.

It puts them closer and Brooke suddenly realises she’s still sitting on the edge of the mattress, like a weirdo. Like a wartime nurse making sure her patient hasn’t died in the night.

Brooke died in the night. Or her last three brain cells did anyway. She gets up and moves to the other side of the room, like she’s spooked.

“Do you got somethin’ I can wear, Mamí? They gon’ kick me out if I roll up for breakfast in this.” She’s holding her dress from last night up like she’s offering it to Brooke.

Both of them being barefoot is making their height difference even more apparent. Brooke isn’t really sure what to give her. She’s not a jeans girl, is usually either wearing workout clothes or slacks or a dress of some kind. None of those things are going to fit Vanessa.

“Ooh, actually!” She rummages in her drawer for a second and comes up with a pair of black pants that have various rips in them, but should at least fit okay. “Katya left these here because she’s a garbage creature. I keep forgetting to give them back.”

She knows how that must look. Katya had left them one of the many nights she’d crashed at Brooke’s even though her own room is only two floors up. She’d padded back upstairs in just the underwear and shirt she’d slept in, to change for yoga, and has never gotten around to collecting her jeans from Brooke’s dresser.

“She ain’t gonna mind borrowing them to me?” Brooke shakes her head, and Vanessa shrugs. “Work.”

Brooke steps out into the hallway to give Vanessa a little privacy to change. She stands there against the wall, head tipped back, trying very hard not to think about Vanessa getting undressed on the other side of it. Her phone is clenched tight in her fist and she peeks at it, sees that she has six unread messages.

When she clicks into the app, they are all from Katya.

_aaahhhhh!!!!_

_bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_you better turn that pussy OUT_

_yes its gay to ask_

_good job youre a giant lesbian_

The last message is a long string of emojis. Scissors, kiss faces, two girls holding hands, water droplets, that sideways smirk Katya seems to love so much. There are also a few ghosts and random animals and a few tractors tossed in, for reasons unknown to Brooke. Each one shows up multiple times, so that the bubble for just that one message takes up the entire screen.

_calm down you cryptkeeper_

_nothing happened_

Katya is usually slow to reply, but her response pings through right away.

_sure it didnt martha_

_breakfast???_

Brooke texts back to tell her that she and Vanessa are getting breakfast together and to kindly but firmly shut down any notion of Katya joining them. She loves her best friend, she does, her heart is made soft and sticky by it. That doesn’t mean she’s going to subject Vanessa to early-morning-chaos Katya. Especially when she got both high and laid last night.

She earns herself a string of broken heart emojis for her efforts, but it is almost immediately followed up with:

_lov u, cant wait to hear about your sinful homosexual exploits later, pls keep the lord in your heart today and remember He loves you_

It makes her laugh, stupid as it is. Enough time has passed now that Brooke dares to open the door and peek her head inside. Vanessa is standing in front of the mirror. Katya’s jeans are tight on her, enough that she can’t button them properly. She’s wearing the shirt she slept in and Brooke watches her for a second as she tries to tuck it in a way that makes it look purposeful and also covers the unfastened waistband of the pants.

“It’ll be quiet. It’s a Saturday, and it’s early.”

“I been knew it’s early, bitch.” Vanessa meets her eyes in the mirror and grins, turns around to look at Brooke properly. “I just ain’t used to not turning a look, you know?”

She does know, actually. “You look fine. Good. Cute.”

Vanessa watches her wrestling for the right word, the word that will reassure her without letting on just how badly Brooke wants to peel those jeans off and lay her down.

“I thought you was starving, Mamí. Been hearin’ your stomach growl out in the hall. You comin’?”

She strides across Brooke’s room like it’s hers, like she spends every day here, and want pours through Brooke’s chest cavity and into the pit of her stomach like warm water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m sorry this update has taken me so long! what if all along, the slow burn.... was me


End file.
